Faith of Our Founders

The paragraph below is from John Adams to Samuel Miller (a Presbyterian minister). Notice what he says about Calvinist and Calvinism. Adams was not orthodox, but he is right about Calvinism's influence, and this is true not only of New England, but of almost all of early America.

"You know not the gratification you have given me by your kind, frank, and candid letter. I must be a very unnatural son to entertain any prejudices against the Calvinists, or Calvinism, according to your confession of faith; for my father and mother, my uncles and aunts, and all my predecessors, from our common ancestor, who landed in this country two hundred years ago, wanting five months, were of that persuasion. Indeed, I have never known any better people than the Calvinists." July 8, 1820

The American War for Independence can not be understood if the dominant theology of the American Colonists is ignored. That theology was Covenant theology and Calvinism. The New England Congregationalists, the Scots and Scotch-Irish Presbyterians, Dutch and German Reformed, the French Huguenots that settled in the Carolinas, the small but growing Baptist, and the Anglicans (Episcopalians) all had Calvinistic Creeds. These groups made up the vast majority of early Americans.

It has been noted by the Austrian born Roman Catholic scholar Erik Von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, that Calvinistic thinking was so dominant in Colonial America and the early republic that even the Roman Catholics of Maryland, while they were officially Thomists in their thinking, acted and thought in Calvinistic ways.

If we want to see a return to the Christian culture of early America, we must work to point our Christian neighbours to the theological foundations of early America. We must point them to biblical Calvinism and Covenant theology.

Semper Reformanda,
Kenith Andry